


Truth Will Out

by devera



Category: Assassin's Creed III - Fandom
Genre: Gen, Implied Childhood Sexual Abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-17
Updated: 2012-12-17
Packaged: 2018-01-26 14:39:10
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,470
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1691933
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/devera/pseuds/devera
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>All acts have consequence</p>
            </blockquote>





	Truth Will Out

**Author's Note:**

> I'm archiving a bit of anonymous kinkmeme stuff before it gets lost forever. This one was my as-always indirect response to a prompt where someone insults Connor in Haytham's presence and Haytham responds. It's set just after that utterly brilliant scene where Connor and Haytham escape the burning warehouse and presumably part ways.
> 
> I didn't stick to the letter of the prompt, but I did use it to explore the possible reasons Connor and Haytham ended the way they did in the game (I always yearn for reconciliation, but the reality is it's not always going to happen; sometimes not ever. Thanks ever so much AC3 for driving that point home, by the way. I'm still not over it!)

Haytham had thought... Well, perhaps he had thought that it was only sadness that he felt, but as soon as he saw Charles, the knowledge that he had been deliberately disobeyed, that Charles, for all his intelligence, his efficiency, was no better than a common thug  _pretending_  to the higher ideals of their order, rose in his gullet like bile. That the man's unsanctioned actions had resulted in the death of Connor's mother was knowledge both new and surprisingly painful, but what really stuck in Haytham's craw was that Charles was, for all intents and purposes, more responsible for the man Connor was today – not merely a trained Assassin, but one hell bent on destroying the Order's foothold in the New Colonies – than Haytham himself. It was utterly aggravating to discover that the situation could have been so easily avoided had Charles just  _followed orders_. It made Haytham want briefly to strangle the man.  
  
"You seem a little singed, Sir," Charles observed as Haytham shrugged of his charred coat and dropped it over the back of his chair. He was in the middle of penning missives to their operatives in Connecticut, but at the sight that Haytham must have presented – tired, slightly unkempt and injured in numerous minor ways – he stopped what he was doing. "And... also soaked?" Charles' eyebrows rose questioningly; he was well aware it was mild weather out and had been all week. "A rough night, then? Did you find Church?"  
  
Haytham stared at Charles for a long moment, but his foul mood seemed to preclude a more moderated approach to the issue.  
  
"The assassin told me you burned his village to the ground and murdered his mother," he said severely and without preamble. "When I expressly said pursuing further knowledge of the precursor site was a gross waste of our time and resources. Would you care to explain your thinking to me?" But Haytham wasn't actually in the mood to hear what Charles had to say on the matter. "Or perhaps instead you would like to explain why you saw fit to do your utmost to encourage onto the path of vengeance someone with hereditary ties to our oldest enemies when they had all but been eradicated from this continent?"  
  
Charles seemed stunned to silence by this dressing down, his mouth hanging open and his face suddenly quite pale in the lamp light.  
  
"I..." he began, and Haytham felt his mouth pull into a tight, forbidding line.  
  
"Yes? I'm waiting."  
  
"I believed that they were hiding something," Charles said finally, carefully. "And that your... personal involvement, Sir, had... blinded you to that."  
  
Haytham felt something go very cold inside him.   
  
"My personal involvement," he repeated calmly. "And what piece of critical information led you to believe this? You have evidence, I take it? Actual fact upon which to base your actions?"  
  
Charles paled further at that, but his jaw clenched and there was a strange kind of fire in his eyes.  
  
"No evidence, but my own eyes," he said stiffly, and quite suddenly colour flushed his cheeks. "You were besotted, Sir! You refused to see reason! Would not hear a contrary word about her! What was I to think except that she was spreading her legs in order to keep you from the truth?!"  
  
Haytham felt as if he had been slapped, not because part of what Charles said was not true – for Haytham had indeed been quite besotted with Ziio – but because of the insult in Charles' accusation; that he had been  _so_  besotted that Ziio had fed him lie upon lie like a mother feeds its young milk.  
  
"I see," he said, so very carefully that Charles' eyes went slightly wider than they already were. "These are your reasons."  
  
"I know how you feel about slaves," Charles said in a rush. "I made absolutely sure that the villagers had time to escape. I never meant- I mean, Sir, I did not intend for the woman to die."  
  
Haytham sat down in his chair finally, suddenly tired beyond all reckoning.  
  
"No," he agreed. "I don't suppose you did. Did you know it's her son? My son, I mean. The Assassin."  
  
There was a clatter from the direction of Charles' desk, and Haytham looked dully over to find Charles was standing and his chair turned over behind him, and now his face was not pale but ashen.  
  
"Your- " he said, as if something monstrous was clawing at his throat.  
  
"Yes," Haytham said, watching him, wondering distantly at the extremely disproportionate response to the news. "Ridiculous, isn't it? The one thing I've always wanted, and he wants to kill me. You too, by the way. In fact, you most of all. It's like he holds you personally responsible for the world's ills. Me, he merely resents for abandoning him, for siding with an organisation he believes, in his ignorance, to be misguided in its aims and tyrannical in its ways. But you? You he hates with a particular passion."  
  
"I – " Charles stuttered, starting at him like a man at his executioner. "I have to go."  
  
Haytham watched narrowly as Charles began gathering up his letters and pulled on his coat. His hands were shaking as he did so. He was no longer looking Haytham in the face. Something about his reaction struck Haytham as horribly wrong, as the actions of a man with something else to hide, something worse than that which Haytham had already discovered.  
  
"Charles," Haytham said warningly, and Charles froze halfway around his desk, his satchel crushed to his chest as if for protection. "There's something else, isn't there." It was not a question.  
  
Charles' gaze darted to his before darting away again. It was long enough for Haytham to read the guilt in his face.  
  
"You may want to tell me," he told him and it sounded like the unformed threat it actually was. "Before I find out elsewhere. And I will find out."  
  
Charles flinched as if struck.  
  
"There was a... boy," he began haltingly, as if dragging the words out of his mouth. He still wasn't quite looking at Haytham. "We found him a mile from the village, creeping around in the woods. He would have given us away. A snarling, spitting, violent little wildcat half-blood, and I didn't think at the time. I was focused on discovering the secrets the tribe had been keeping from you. I let my men... do what they liked with him, so long as they didn't kill him."  
  
The now rushed words did not make any sense for a full few moments, like gibberish that Haytham knew he should understand but didn't. It was the way that Charles pressed his lips together, wet them with a quick, anxious flick of his tongue for some reason that made Haytham realise what he was actually saying, understand it perhaps on a visceral level - that Charles had let his men  _at_  Connor, barely only a boy, that he had stood by while a handful of grown men, no better than animals, had- had-  
  
His son. His only son.  
  
The world seemed to wash white, soundless, and inside Haytham felt nothing, his insides turned hard like stone.  
  
"Haytham, if I had known..." Charles was saying, as if from very far away. "Of course I would never have- I mean, I didn't participate in the- God knows, I would  _never_ -"  
  
"Get out," Haytham heard himself say very, very softly.  
  
"Haytham, I'm –"  
  
"Get out, Charles," Haytham said again, stronger. His own hands were shaking now, palms itching and if he laid his hands to anything right now it would be a knife and he would gut Charles where he stood.  
  
"Yes, Sir," Charles breathed like he was afraid it was his last. "At once."  
  
Haytham sat at his desk for a very long time after Charles had gone. He did not question himself or the decisions he had made in the past. He did not think about Ziio's lovely, rare laugh and how impossibly happy she had made him for such an unfairly brief amount of time. He did not think about his hand upon her huge round belly the day he left, feeling the baby inside her kick at his touch even as she told him she would raise the boy as hers and that wherever the Gods led Haytham, there would always be a part of him that was living in love.  
  
He did not think about his proud, angry son and how he had seen him shy away from the casual, innocent touch of other men.  
  
He deliberately did not think of anything at all, but inside, there was a part of him that saw the beginning of the inevitable end; his death, Charles', the ruin of all their plans, decades of Templar work undone.  
  
And welcomed it.


End file.
